A mid-cretaceous origin of sociality in xylocopine bees with only two origins of true worker castes indicates severe barriers to eusociality

The origin of sterile worker castes, resulting in eusociality, represents one of the major evolutionary transitions in the history of life. Understanding how eusociality has evolved is therefore an important issue for understanding life on earth. Here we show that in the large bee subfamily Xylocopi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:PloS one 2012-04, Vol.7 (4), p.e34690-e34690
Main Authors: Rehan, Sandra M, Leys, Remko, Schwarz, Michael P
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Bayes Theorem
Bees
Bees - classification
Bees - physiology
Behavior
Behavior, Animal
Biological Evolution
Biology
Bombini
Castes
Cretaceous
Cretaceous period
Eusociality
Evolution
Evolutionary biology
Extreme values
Genes
Hierarchy, Social
Life history
Life on Earth
Likelihood Functions
Meliponini
Nesting
Origins
Phylogenetics
Phylogeny
Selection, Genetic
Social Behavior
Workers (insect caste)
Xylocopa
Xylocopinae
Xylocopini
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Summary:The origin of sterile worker castes, resulting in eusociality, represents one of the major evolutionary transitions in the history of life. Understanding how eusociality has evolved is therefore an important issue for understanding life on earth. Here we show that in the large bee subfamily Xylocopinae, a simple form of sociality was present in the ancestral lineage and there have been at least four reversions to purely solitary nesting. The ancestral form of sociality did not involve morphological worker castes and maximum colony sizes were very small. True worker castes, entailing a life-time commitment to non-reproductive roles, have evolved only twice, and only one of these resulted in discrete queen-worker morphologies. Our results indicate extremely high barriers to the evolution of eusociality. Its origins are likely to have required very unusual life-history and ecological circumstances, rather than the amount of time that selection can operate on more simple forms of sociality.
ISSN:1932-6203
1932-6203
DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0034690